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Brown Dwarfs

BROWN DWARFS: stars too small to perform nuclear fusion (no new energy) but too massive to be a planet

Masses range from 13 Jupiter-masses to 25 Jupiter-masses

Radius same as Jupiter but be up to 60-90 Jupiter masses

Some emit x-rays

All glow red in the infrared spectra until they cool off to 1,000 K

In 1995, the first brown dwarf, Teide 1 of the Pleiades cluster (M8 star), was discovered by the Spanish Observatory of Roque de los Muchachos and verified. Most brown dwarfs belong to spectral types L and T, which contain cooler stars than spectral type M. So far, more than 1,000 brown dwarfs have been discovered.

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References for photos used from websites can be found under the "References" page. Photo credit: news sites (reference included in post), NASA (most images used), and Google (for artists' view of objects unable to be photographed).